Hand-washing clothes in India is part of the daily drudgery for hundreds of millions of housewives who can’t afford the ‘professional’ male dhobis (or the electric washing machines) that urban middle-class & elites employ for laundry. The process is inefficient not just in terms of time, but also water usage and it often accounts for nearly half of a household’s daily water requirements. In a hot country with a billion thirsty mouths where most homes get running water for about 2 hours a day (if at all), saving water by making laundry more efficient should be a top priority.
Enter the Honeybee Network and National Innovation Foundation (NIF).
Spearheaded by IIM Professor Anil Gupta, the Honeybee Network takes teams of volunteers on exploratory journeys through rural India where they scour the countryside for innovations that they hope to spread to other parts of the country. When innovations have commercial value, they pass the product on to the NIF (also sprearheaded by Anil Gupta) which aims to streamline the manufacturing process and formalize the intellectual property so that an entrepreneur can easily & efficiently buy the rights to bring the product to market.
Except there is nothing easy or efficient about it.
The Honeybee Network found Remya Jose more than 4 years ago in rural Kerala. Faced with an ailing mother and the demands of continuing her high school education, Remya developed a pedal-powered washing machine that saves time, energy, and water as a 10th grade student in rural Kerala. Through NIF’s instrumentality, her innovation was featured in Outlook magazine in 2005 followed by a Discovery Channel feature, an NDTV story, an even an award from India’s then-President, Abdul Kalam. With all that attention, you would think Remya machine would be all over India by now, and she would be collecting royalties amounting to millions of rupees.
Think again.
The NIF ‘helped’ re-design Remya’s washing machine from a device that cost Rs. 1500 to manufacture from scratch in rural india, to machine that cost Rs. 3000 to make in an urban factory. Since it would be competing with low-end single-cycle electric washing machines that cost Rs. 5000, it’s price-point is above what India’s poor can afford while simultaneously being below what the middle class demands when compared to the Rs. 5000 electric alternative. A wonderful case study in perfectly sub-optimal pricing.
Further, though the NIF helped to patent Remya’s intellectual property, the licensing agreement is designed so that NIF recovers its ‘investment’ on Remya’s innovation by taking a percentage of payments and royalties, adding another layer of expense and complication to something they ostensibly work to simplify.
NIF boasts a small handful of success stories, including generating attention in the mainstream Indian press and sparking interest among socially-engaged Indian youth. Yet it remains an open question as to whether their successes outweigh their failures, and the few opportunities they have created make up for the glaring missed opportunities of the effort.
Besides Remya’s washing machine, other innovations they have failed to capitalize on include a mobile phone-activated irrigation pump that saves farmers from manually turning on & off the water to their fields, a system to eliminate train accidents on Indian railways, a geared pedal rickshaw for faster transport with less effort, and a floating bicycle that can save lives during floods. Some of the early press coverage quotes Anil Gupta and others lamenting the huge untapped potential of rural innovators, but lacking in the candor to admit how much NIF’s own systems, processes, and personnel are part of the problem.
I approached the NIF in mid-2007 to find innovative products to demo and advertise (at no-cost!) on our newly-created social marketing platform, Lok Darshan. We were looking for products that would help the poorest of the poor, and the pedal washing machine definitely had the potential to lift people out of poverty through creation of efficient dhobi micro-enterprises. Besides a partnership that would get their products seen by the urban poor of Ahmedabad who would actually demand them (as opposed to the middle & upper-classes on Discovery & NDTV for whom the innovations were mere entertainment), I also seriously looked into purchasing the intellectual property for Remya Jose’s pedal washing machine despite the unfavorable conditions that NIF had created. After enthusiastic meetings and a few rounds of email exchange, communication with NIF dropped off with the following message from NIF’s national business development manager:
“Dear Mr. Brown,
We do agree in principle, We are discussing with our team for follow up. We need your patience and allowance for more delay from our side.”
My follow-up several weeks later yielded no response, and I’m still waiting patiently.
To his credit, Anil Gupta seems genuinely interested in serving India and in uplifting the poorest of the poor. Yet for an organization working with innovators, NIF has remained remarkably stagnant in the way it operates, and its staff lacks the creativity and vision that its clients bristle with.
The enterprising, brave, and patient should try their own hand by reviewing NIF’s list of products to see if they have any more success in bringing innovation to market.
Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be surprised if Alex Gadsen’s Cyclean beats Remya Jose to the Indian mass market.
A middle-school kid from Guangdong, China also developed a pedal-powered washing machine. So perhaps the Chinese model, simple enough to be made from spare parts in a single day, will be the one to dominate the market in this space.
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2008/06/18/china-bike-washing-machine/
[…] https://rahulbrown.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/indias-national-innovation-foundation-and-honeybee-networ… […]
Thanks Rahul for writing down the issues with this network. I had information that NIF has been looking for someone who can lead it in order to make it a world-class organization.
I think the way out from this problem: We first need to talk to Prof. Gupta and see whether we can help him to find right talent.
Are you interested? In any case, do please write me your contact information (including phone number) to my gmail id : malapati.
Thanks,
Raja
Malapati, my offer to help NIF market its innovations for FREE on Lok Darshan still stands. If they had the right management, they would also be a great partner for an upcoming The Ahimsa Center at Gandhi Ashram. I’ll write more to you offline.
dear Rahul
much of your criticism is valid and i can only say that if the issue was only dissemination, then you have done a good job of it. But then visit NIF and find out the stress under which a small team works days and night with highly limited resources,m static for last eight years( though in the same period, the number has swelled to more than hundred thousand practices, ideas, traditional knowledge practices, and of course innovations from over 545 districts ). May be you can be a valuable part of the solution rather than just finding out why much could not be done.
If you read Honey Bee newsletter, you will find in the last several issues in which we have published similar innovations which are found in China, Africa, and India.
I do not know about the right or wrong management at nif, but it is open management and colleagues are welcome to critique it, contribute to improve it ( every criticism helps in improving it) and take it forward.
there is no other public institution which has scaled up the knowledge about creativity and innovation in the country with budget going down in real terms in the last eight years.
we are always looking for mavericks who believe in making thsi ocuntry more creative, comassionate and collaborative,
may be you will also collaborate
all the best and keep critiquing because that indeed helps
anil
sir good day sir , i am prashanth 33years , son of d.ramachandra.i have 5 companies, but i have a foundation too, its started in 24-10-2001.
my dad was helping many people indirectly,now with some good support i want to take the foundation to heights.
please fell free and call to 9844352222 my mobile or land line -08022282228, any time .i have learnt one thing
( we are born naked we die naked,we take only good deeds and good blessings) so please help us
Hello Rahul,
I am a journalist writing for an entrepreneurship magazine. I’m doing a story on innovation of rural India. And I need some help from you.
Awaiting your response.
Thanks,
Shinjini
[…] check out this firsthand perspective on how the National Innovation Foundation and Honeybee Network function in practice. var […]
I have 3Qs for honeybee Network-
1. what matters more :
Featuring in Outlook magazine, Discovery Channel ..blah..blah.. blah..
OR
Implementing the genuine ideas and bringing highly competitive innovative products to the market to serve the people in short time span ?? [ Learn from Chinese ]
2. Why there is no innovation in the working mechanism of an organization, which boasts about promoting innovations ??
3. How Honeybee network is solving the challenge of bringing out the best from their own lazy staffs ??
2. Why there is no innovation in the working mechanism of an organization, which boasts about promoting innovations ??
Touche!! It also puts bubbles in my blood
Hi,
Just wanted to know which are the other organizations particularly in india that are into activities like that of the honey bee network, if any ?
I feel (and of late understand) that it really does make good sense to help people solve thier own problems, intead of (elite) “product designers” and “innovators” sittin in an entirely dirrerent world(different physical world, different economically, diferent social order) coming up with alien solutions.
That said, how many of us realize it ? And organizations like the honey bee network have made an effort. That is something really appreciable. I do not know much of the network to comment on it, but yes the intent was certainly there.
Are there other organizations like this ? I would be interested in working with one of them.
Thanks,
Satya
how does honey bee network help bring the innovative ideas to the podium?
Hi Amlan,
I believe this is an area of strength for HoneyBee Network. Professor Gupta tirelessly speaks of his these innovations with real passion all over India and the world.
That said, there is a huge chasm between classrooms & auditoriums, and the real-world of implementation and deployment of these in the marketplace.
Hi Rahul,
I really appreciate that you were able to highlight both the pros and cons of an institution like the NIF. However, do you have any citation material for the story about Remya’s machine going through the innovation pipeline at NIF? I was not able to find any other story that described the way in which the NIF picked up her technology but ultimately was not able to market it effectively.
best representation of the indian traditional cloth washing techniques and also spoiling the water concept you explained well, thanks to washing machine.
The video that you share with us the pedal washing machine is nice.thanks for posting.
Pedal powered washing machine is the best way to clean the cloth as it saves electricity, and a power.
Saving water by making laundry more efficient should be a top priority.and the presentation for the washing spin dryer machine.
The pedal washing machine is such a power saving and good designs of this pedal washing machine.
[…] check out this firsthand perspective on how the National Innovation Foundation and Honeybee Network function in practice.This is where […]